Page 29 - ARUBA TODAY

A29
PEOPLE & ARTS Tuesday 18 april 2017

Oil wealth, greed, prejudice fueled murders of Osage Indians

JERRY HARKAVY were shot, others had to swindle the Osage out Research by Grann, a staff
Associated Press drunk moonshine whiskey of their headrights. At the writer for The New Yorker,
The FBI burnished its repu- spiked with poison and two center of the conspiracy sheds new light on the mur-
tation by gunning down died when their killer set off was the politically power- ders, including archival evi-
Depression-era gangster an explosion at their home. ful William Hale, a one-time dence implicating a bank
John Dillinger and bringing White authorities seemed cowboy, part-time lawman president. The author also
to justice the kidnapper of indifferent about the mur- and self-styled preacher, suggests that the Reign of
Charles Lindbergh’s baby. ders, prompting members known to all as the “King of Terror went on far longer
However, a more chal- of the tribe to hire private the Osage Hills.” than initially thought, be-
lenging but long forgotten detectives to try to crack White sought justice for the ginning as early as 1918
investigation a decade the case. But the chilling tribe at a time when ram- and continuing for years
earlier gave the fledgling conspiracies designed to pant prejudice made po- after Hale’s arrest in 1925.
agency its first major suc- wrest the oil headrights from tential witnesses reluctant Readers with a taste for
cess. the victims came to light to implicate fellow whites true-crime narratives would
At least two dozen and only after J. Edgar Hoover’s in crimes against Indians; be hard-pressed to find
perhaps as many as sev- Bureau of Investigation, bribery, perjury and jury one more gripping than
eral hundred Osage Indi- later renamed the FBI, got tampering were common- This book cover image re- this unraveling of a mystery
ans were murdered during involved in the case. The place. As a prominent leased by Doubleday shows, that once captivated the
“Killers of the Flower Moon:
what became known as a hero of the saga is Tom member of the tribe put The Osage Murders and the nation but is now barely
yearslong “Reign of Terror.” White, a larger-than-life for- it when Hale went to trial: Birth of the FBI,” by David remembered. History buffs
The shocking episode that mer Texas Ranger who de- “It is a question in my mind Grann. with an interest in the set-
unfolded on the high-grass ployed a network of under- whether this jury is consid- Associated Press tlement of the West and
prairie during the 1920s was cover agents to help ex- ering a murder case or not. man killing an Osage is the treatment of its indig-
fueled by oil wealth, greed pose corrupt guardianships The question for them to murder — or merely cruelty enous populations will find
and prejudice. that allowed greedy whites decide is whether a white to animals.” even more to chew on.q
Like so many other Na-
tive Americans, the Osage
were driven from their an-
cestral lands as settlers
moved into the West. The
tribe ended up on barren
and seemingly worthless
reservation lands in north-
east Oklahoma. But when
huge oil deposits were
discovered there, it ap-
peared that the tribe had
finally hit the jackpot.
Osage whose names were
on the tribal rolls received
“headrights” that entitled
them to a share of the in-
come from oil leases and
royalties. The newfound
wealth allowed them to
build mansions, drive luxu-
ry cars and send children
to posh boarding schools,
breeding resentment from
jealous whites and giving
rise to a growing string of
unsolved killings.
“The world’s richest people
per capita were becom-
ing the world’s most mur-
dered,” writes David Grann
in “Killers of the Flower
Moon: The Osage Murders
and the Birth of the FBI,”
his riveting account of the
killings that first came to
light in May 1921 when the
body of an Osage woman
who had gone missing was
found by squirrel hunters
in a ravine. The slain body
of another member of the
tribe was found at roughly
the same time.
The body count kept grow-
ing. Some of the dead